Monday, 1 January 2018

Bicycling the Danube, Part 3: Highlights and Lowlights

Cycling the Danube (Part 3 of 3): Part 1: Pros and Cons Part 2: Practicalities Part 3: Highlights and Lowlights Places to Visit Places to Stay Detours from the Danube Family History In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, I talked about why you might (or might... (...Read Entire Entry)

Bicycling the Danube, Part 1: Pros and Cons

[A "Radler" in German can mean either either a bicyclist or a mildly-alcoholic drink consisting of half beer and half lemonade.] Cycling the Danube (Part 1 of 3): Part 1: Pros and Cons Why Bicycle the Danube? Why Not? Part 2: Practicalities Part 3: Highlights and Lowlights My partner... (...Read Entire Entry)

Monday, 12 December 2016

Notes from Amsterdam, Brussels, and Istanbul

["Hasbrouck" is a French Huguenot name, presumably of Flemish etymology, meaning "Rabbit Marsh" or, as a Belgian customs man once told me, "Swamp of the Bunnies". It's spelled differently in France, South Africa, the USA, and the Netherlands. One evening on the way back to my hostel from a... (...Read Entire Entry)

Thursday, 13 October 2016

Amtrak improves long-distance bicycle transport

Over the last month, Amtrak has quietly rolled out a major upgrade to its services for transporting bicycles on long-distance trains: Amtrak has added bike racks or hooks for unboxed bikes in the baggage cars of almost all of its long-distance trains. Kudos to Amtrak, whose headquarters isn't always so... (...Read Entire Entry)

Friday, 15 April 2016

The Amazing Race 28, Episode 8

Tbilisi (Georgia) - Dubai (U.A.E.) Dubai is constantly under construction, as host Phil Keoghan noted at the start of this episode of The Amazing Race 28. As I pointed out when the reality-TV show first visited Dubai in 2009, that can make it hard to find an up-to-date map, recognize... (...Read Entire Entry)

Friday, 4 March 2016

The Amazing Race 28, Episode 4

Cartagena (Colombia) - Geneva (Switzerland) - Chamonix (France) [The giant "Broken Chair" on the plaza across the street from the flagpoles in front of the "Palais des Nations" in Geneva. The broken-off leg is at the left rear, mostly hidden from this angle.] The Amazing Race has been to Geneva... (...Read Entire Entry)

Friday, 26 February 2016

The Amazing Race 28, Episode 3

Cartagena (Colombia) In this episode of The Amazing Race, the travellers got to work a job that is common around the world, but almost nonexistent in the USA: bus conductor. "Outside the First World," as I note in The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World, "All buses have... (...Read Entire Entry)

Friday, 27 November 2015

The Amazing Race 27, Episode 10

Agra (India) I couldn't get away from talking about bicycling while covering The Amazing Race, even if I wanted to. As I've noted often, and as anyone trying out for a spot in the cast of the reality-TV travel show should keep in mind, host and co-producer Phil Keoghan is... (...Read Entire Entry)

Friday, 20 November 2015

Vote now to save the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

Save the SF Bicycle Coalition! Vote here for the "Save SF Bike!" slate Voting is now open for members to vote for the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC). If you care about the rights of cyclists in San Francisco, I urge you to join... (...Read Entire Entry)

Friday, 9 October 2015

The Amazing Race 27, Episode 3

Buenos Aires (Argentina) - San Antonio de Areco (Argentina) [La Soñada Posada, along RP14 in La Población, Córdoba Province] This week The Amazing Race 27 left Buenos Aires for San Antonio de Areco, which has branded itself as the leading destination in Argentina for "gaucho tourism". If you ask a... (...Read Entire Entry)

Wednesday, 30 September 2015

Bicycle components for touring in Argentina

[The Malvinas [Falkland] Islands are Argentine! And there's a tire repair and bicycle shop just across the road.] When you are choosing what to bring on any trip, it's important to consider both what's appropriate for local conditions and what's locally available if you need to replace it. If... (...Read Entire Entry)

Tuesday, 29 September 2015

Bicycle touring in Argentina

My partner and I spent June and July of 2015 (southern hemisphere winter) bicycling across Argentina, west to east, from Mendoza to Buenos Aires. tl;dr summary: We had a good trip, and we would recommend it and do it again ourselves (with some different preparations and expectations). But travelling... (...Read Entire Entry)

Wednesday, 22 July 2015

SF Bicycle Coalition proposes to eliminate voting membership

Save the SF Bicycle Coalition! The Board of Directors of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is proposing to amend the SFBC's Bylaws to abolish voting membership in the organization, and transfer all decision-making authority for the SFBC to itself as a "self-perpetuating" board. If the proposed amendments to the... (...Read Entire Entry)

Thursday, 9 July 2015

The news from Las Rosas

It's mid-summer in the northern hemisphere, mid-winter where I'm currently travelling in Argentina. Today I'm in Las Rosas in the province of Santa Fe, a town unlikely to be mentioned in any guidebook although large enough to have at least three hotels for local business visitors. It's the sort... (...Read Entire Entry)

Friday, 24 April 2015

The Amazing Race 26, Episode 8

[The line of people waiting to audition for The Amazing Race extended around the corner for two blocks.] Goanikontes (Namibia) - Windhoek (Namibia) - Johannesburg (South Africa) - Amsterdam (Netherlands) As soon as the contestants on The Amazing Race 26 got into taxis at Schiphol Airport (a waste of... (...Read Entire Entry)

Wednesday, 11 February 2015

Open letter to members of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

I'm a candidate for the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Candidates' statements and election info More about the issues and why I'm running I'm writing to my fellow members of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, to let you know about some important issues related to... (...Read Entire Entry)

Friday, 12 December 2014

The Amazing Race 25, Episode 11

Manila (Philippines) In this episode of The Amazing Race 25, the contestants faced a cycling challenge whose difficulty was a consequence -- in a not so obvious way -- of the economic conditions in the Philippines that I talked about last week. As I've noted previously, the on-screen host and... (...Read Entire Entry)

Tuesday, 11 November 2014

More on why I'm running for the board of the S.F. Bicycle Coalition

Announcement of my candidacy Candidates' statements and election info Follow-up letter to members of the SF Bicycle Coalition In announcing my candidacy for the for the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, I said that I would bring to the Board a focus on policy advocacy,... (...Read Entire Entry)

Thursday, 6 November 2014

I'm a candidate for the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

More about the issues and why I'm running Candidates' statements and election info Follow-up letter to members of the SF Bicycle Coalition I'm one of nine candidates in this year's election for eight seats on the 15-member Board of Directors of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. Who am I,... (...Read Entire Entry)

Friday, 24 October 2014

The Amazing Race 25, Episode 5

Copenhagen (Denmark) - Marrakesh (Morocco) Former bike messengers Alli and Kym finished first again in this leg of The Amazing Race 25 after yet another task that required making deliveries by bicycle. This week each racer had to secure several bundles of freshly-tanned goatskins with bungee cords on top of... (...Read Entire Entry)

Monday, 22 September 2014

Business and pleasure in Cancún at the TBEX travel bloggers' conference

[San Miguelito archeological site in the hotel zone, Cancún] I was in Cancún last week for the TBEX conference of travel bloggers. Blogging is a fairly solitary activity, and not everyone understands what it means to be a professional blogger or travel writer. I write about independent do-it-yourself travel,... (...Read Entire Entry)

Tuesday, 9 September 2014

A visit to Hazebrouck

["Hazebrouck en Flandre." Jersey ("maillot") of the Hazebrouck-based CCFVL cycling club.] One of the unexpected high points of my summer bicycle trip from the Swiss Alps to the Scottish Highlands was a visit to the town of Hazebrouck in French Flanders, from which my family name is [most likely]... (...Read Entire Entry)

Monday, 28 July 2014

Speaking at SXSW Eco in Austin, 6-8 Oct. 2014

I've accepted an invitation to speak at the South By Southwest Eco conference on sustainability in Austin, TX, 6-8 October 2014: "Peak Travel" : Envisioning the Post-Air Travel Age The aviation industry hopes to obtain enough cheap biofuel to sustain air travel without diverting land, water, or labor from food... (...Read Entire Entry)

Sunday, 4 May 2014

The Amazing Race 24, Episode 10 (European Bicycle Touring Resources)

Mt. Titlis (Switzerland) - Seville (Spain) European Bicycle Touring Resources I was in Switzerland, Belgium, and the UK on business in March, and I'll be back in Switzerland, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK in June and July on a bicycling trip. We're flying with our bicycles to... (...Read Entire Entry)

Wednesday, 15 January 2014

What can be done about San Francisco police bias against bicyclists?

[Photo copyright 2014 by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. Some rights reserved, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.] An unprecedented number of bicyclists and pedestrians run down and killed by motorists in San Francisco in the last year has prompted unprecedented public debate about what Jane Kim of the Board of Supervisors... (...Read Entire Entry)

Sunday, 10 November 2013

The Amazing Race 23, Episode 6 (FAQ: International Bicycle Travel)

Vienna (Austria) - Abu Dhabi (UAE) FAQ: International Bicycle Travel In this week's episode, for the first time in 23 seasons (several of which have included visits to places where mosques are major tourist attractions), The Amazing Race visited a mosque. There's a common misperception that non-Muslims aren't allowed in... (...Read Entire Entry)

Sunday, 3 November 2013

The Amazing Race 23, Episode 5 (FAQ: Buying a Touring Bicycle)

Gdansk (Poland) - Vienna (Austria) FAQ: Buying a Touring Bicycle Intro ("The Amazing Race", Poland, and travel by bicycle) FAQ about buying a touring bike Viewers of the most recent episode of The Amazing Race 23 may have been surprised that it took the racers 22 hours to cross Poland... (...Read Entire Entry)

Sunday, 6 October 2013

The Amazing Race 23, Episode 2 (FAQ: Travel by Bicycle)

Iquique (Chile) - Santiago (Chile) - San Alfonso (Chile) FAQ: Travel by Bicycle Phil Keoghan, the host of The Amazing Race, is a serious bicyclist, and has used his influence as co-producer of the reality-TV show to get the racers onto bicycles at some point in almost every season. In... (...Read Entire Entry)

Friday, 4 October 2013

Bicyclists and the San Francisco police

I testified yesterday at a landmark hearing before a committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (city council) on "Police Department Protocol for Investigating Cyclist and Pedestrian Fatalities and Serious Injuries Resulting from Traffic Collisions", which actually turned into a broader -- and unprecedented, at least in San Francisco... (...Read Entire Entry)

Wednesday, 31 July 2013

The ride to the Atlantic ends in the Hub

[A taste of home: Chowder and smelts for lunch at the "No Name Restaurant" on Boston's Fish Pier.] Our (partial) transcontinental bicycle journey ended today on the waterfront in Boston, exactly two months and more than 2600 miles (4200 km) after an airport shuttle from Denver dropped us off... (...Read Entire Entry)

Monday, 15 July 2013

The Amazing Race Canada

[A rare moment when some sun broke through the storm clouds as we approached Toronto on the Waterfront Trail. Torrential rain resumed as we reached the vicinity of the CN Tower, visible in the background. More rain fell in the next 48 hours than ever before in such a... (...Read Entire Entry)

Wednesday, 19 June 2013

From the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi River

[Crossing the Mississippi from Dubuque, IA, into Wisconsin] As we came down the Mississippi River bluffs into Dubuque, Iowa, this morning, my bicycle odometer registered my thousandth mile since we started out from Cheyenne, Wyoming, on the eastern slope of the Rockies, three weeks ago on May 31th. We're... (...Read Entire Entry)

Thursday, 30 May 2013

Now departing for Cheyenne, Omaha, and points east

This evening my partner, Ruth, and I are flying from San Francisco to Denver, where we'll get a shuttle from the airport to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Our bicycles are waiting for us at a bike shop in Cheyenne, where we shipped them ahead to have them reassembled and ready to ride.... (...Read Entire Entry)

Monday, 22 April 2013

I can't make it to Sacramento today, but the Committee on Transportation of the California Assembly will be holding a hearing on two bills of interest: Assembly Bill 179 (status) would extend the privacy protections provided by current California law for records related to RFID vehicle toll payment systems (e.g.... (...Read Entire Entry)

Friday, 7 September 2012

Back on the bikes, with help from our friends

My plans for a cross-country bike trip with my partner Ruth Radetsky during her vacation from teaching this summer were derailed a week before the end of her school year when she hit a pothole in the bike lane at Bosworth and Lyell Streets in Glen Park and crashed, breaking... (...Read Entire Entry)

Tuesday, 31 January 2012

Is the advertised price too good to be true? No. (Part 2 of 2)

Yersterday I analyzed a deceptive travel deal that was much less of a discount from the regular price than it was advertised to be. Today I'll look at the flip side of the coin: What happens when you are offered a price that's much more of a deal than... (...Read Entire Entry)

Friday, 20 January 2012

Bicycle routes through Brisbane, California

I attended the Brisbane (CA) City Council this week to talk about some of the unintended consequences of the new bike lanes on Bayshore Boulevard. It was a promising discussion, and I hope it has opened the door to addressing some larger regional transportation issues. These issues aren't limited to... (...Read Entire Entry)

Sunday, 6 November 2011

The Amazing Race 19, Episode 7

Lilongwe (Malawi) - Salima (Malawi) - Senga Bay (Malawi) This week's episode of The Amazing Race 19 was a lesson in Africa, poverty, and bicycling. First the teams of racers made their way by bus from Lilongwe (the capital and one of the two major cities of Malawi) along the... (...Read Entire Entry)

Sunday, 21 November 2010

The Amazing Race 17, Episode 9

Muscat (Oman) - Dhaka (Bangladesh) One of the most welcoming sights in a tropical country is a sugar-cane press. So it's fitting that the first task for the contestants on The Amazing Race 17 was to prepare and drink a fresh-squeezed glass of cane juice. (Make mine with salt and... (...Read Entire Entry)

Sunday, 9 May 2010

The Amazing Race 16, Episode 12

Pudong (China) - San Francisco, CA (USA) This week, The Amazing Race 16 returned to the USA from Shanghai, in an episode broadcast the same week that a Shanghai-based startup company launched a very promising, although as yet unproven, new concept in accommodations for future visitors to Shanghai, elsewhere in... (...Read Entire Entry)

Sunday, 2 May 2010

The Amazing Race 16, Episode 11

Shanghai (China) - Pudong (China) "Better City, Better Life" The real clue to what was going on in the latest episode of The Amazing Race 16 in Shanghai was the life-sized Gumby-like figure visible in front of one of the buildings in the establishing aerial shot at the start... (...Read Entire Entry)

Sunday, 21 February 2010

The Amazing Race 16, Episode 2

Valparaiso (Chile) - Puerto Varas (Chile) Valparaíso narrowly missed my short list of a dozen favorite new destination discoveries from my last trip around the world: if I had let the list grow to a baker's dozen, it would have included Valpo. For what it's worth, the picture of me... (...Read Entire Entry)

Friday, 12 February 2010

Willie Weir in Oakland and Sacramento

When he isn't bicycling around the world, Willie Weir spends most of his time in and around Seattle. Next week Northern California travellers get a relatively rare chance to experience his unique and inspiring evangelism for independent travel at presentations at REI in Sacramento on Wednesday and Thursday nights and... (...Read Entire Entry)

Sunday, 1 November 2009

The Amazing Race 15, Episode 6

Dubai (U.A.E.) - Amsterdam (Netherlands) - Afsluitdijk (Netherlands) - Groningen (Netherlands) - Vierhuizen de Marne (Netherlands) - Zoutkamp (Netherlands) The Amazing Race 15 spent the night at a resort on one of a complex of artificial islands in the Arabian Gulf in Dubai. The resort and the islands were prominently... (...Read Entire Entry)

Sunday, 4 October 2009

The Amazing Race 15, Episode 2

Cai Be (Vietnam) - My Tho (Vietnam) - Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) Once again this week The Amazing Race managed to come up with tasks that were genuinely characteristic of the places the racers were visiting on their trip around the world, in this case Ho Chi Minh City,... (...Read Entire Entry)

Sunday, 15 March 2009

Travel reading, travel writing, and the public library

I spent the weekend in Sacramento, where I was interviewed by Jeffrey Callison on Capital Public Radio's Insight show (the segment with me is from 20-35 minutes into the audio archive) and gave one of the keynote speaches at the Sacramento Library Foundation's annual fundraising dinner, this year on the... (...Read Entire Entry)

Sunday, 18 March 2007

The Amazing Race 11 (All-Star Edition), Episode 5

Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego (Argentina) - Ushuaia (Argentina) - Maputo (Mozambique) I'm tempted to reminisce about my experiences in the markets of Maputo, Mozambique, the scene of The Amazing Race this week. But I'll leave that for next week. First, I have to talk about this week's airline routing... (...Read Entire Entry)

Sunday, 1 October 2006

The Amazing Race 10, Episode 3

Gachurt (Mongolia) - Ulan Bator (Mongolia) - Hanoi (Vietnam) - Vac (Vietnam) The first destination for the teams on "The Amazing Race" this week was the "Hanoi Hilton", where prisoners of war including U.S. Senator John McCain were confined and tortured during the "American War". (That's what the war is... (...Read Entire Entry)

Wednesday, 1 February 2006

Downtown parking and land use priorities

Every day on my way from the BART train station to my office at Airtreks.com in a highrise building South of Market in downtown San Francisco (the most densely populated neighborhoood in the USA west of the Mississippi), I pass a 50-story residential condominium tower -- and included parking garage... (...Read Entire Entry)

Monday, 6 September 2004

Willie Weir: "What Is Adventure?"

Willie Weir may be the most effective and inspiring advocate in the USA for international bicycle travel, but his message is about much more than bicycling. Check out his latest column from Adventure Cycling magazine: "What Is Adventure?" I think Willie overlooks an important distinction between perceived risk and actual... (...Read Entire Entry)

"Congress shall make no law ... abridging ... the right of the people peaceably to assemble." (U.S. Constitution)

"Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." (Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

"Liberty of movement is an indispensable condition for the free development of a person." (United Nations Human Rights Committee)